A purchase order involving multiple items may be split into multiple shipments for a variety of reasons. For instance, some of the items may not be available until a later time. As another example, different items may be available at and/or shipped from different warehouse locations. A consumer may not want to pay for items until the items have actually shipped to reduce the risk of fraud. However, a merchant may desire a guarantee that payment information supplied during an order will still be valid when items are shipped. One approach is to secure payment card authorization for the entire order amount upfront and reversing a portion of the amount if items associated with the amount are not shipped within a certain time period (e.g., 7 days). Such an approach would require re-authorization of the reversed amount when the remaining items are ready to ship. However, such re-authorization after the original authorization could increase a merchant's risk of declined transactions. For example, between 11 am and midnight of the next day, the customer may have exceeded his maximum credit limit.
Embodiments of the present invention address these problems and other problems individually and collectively.